Bulldogs, Dons searching for team identities

By SKIP LEON Skip.Leon@hearstnp.com

Published 10:18 am, Thursday, September 3, 2015

Photo: Skip Leon/Plainview Herald

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Plainview running back Trendan Jackson darts for yardage as a host of Randall defenders chase him. The Bulldog junior ran for 105 yards and scored both Plainview touchdowns in the opening game. He will be looking for another strong game when the Dogs host Palo Duro Friday night. less

Plainview running back Trendan Jackson darts for yardage as a host of Randall defenders chase him. The Bulldog junior ran for 105 yards and scored both Plainview touchdowns in the opening game. He will be ... more

Photo: Skip Leon/Plainview Herald

Bulldogs, Dons searching for team identities

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It was nearly 10 months ago that Plainview and Palo Duro staged an epic battle in the bi-district round of the playoffs with the Dons eeking out a victory on a field goal as time expired.

But that game is ancient history, according to Plainview coach Ryan Rhoades. And in the early going this season, both football teams are trying to find themselves.

The Bulldogs and the Dons will both seek their first win of the season when they square off at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Greg Sherwood Memorial Bulldog Stadium. Plainview came out on the short end of a 29-14 decision to Randall while PD was beaten by Amarillo High, 35-7, in the opening week of the season.

Rhoades said last year’s close loss in the playoffs doesn’t factor in as he tries to prepare his team for the game.

“The honor of getting to play the game and represent this community should be plenty,” Rhoades said. “Last year’s team is no longer here, although there are some members of last year’s team that obviously are here. But this year’s team is going to form its own identity. So, I don’t know that that (playoff loss) would be good to be a motivating factor.”

By the same token, the Dons also are a new team this year, having graduated their top playmakers on offense and some on defense, as well.

Rhoades said that makes PD somewhat unpredictable on offense.

“I think they’re still trying to form their identity,” the coach said. “Last year when they needed something, either their quarterback or running back was going to get the ball. This year they don’t quite have that luxury yet. And so it kind of makes it hard to get ready to defend them because you’re not real sure what they’re going to try to do. It’s an advantage to them in some ways. And it’s an advantage to us in some ways, because they don’t have a guy right now that they can just pick out and say ‘when we need this, we’re going to give it to him.’”

Whereas last season a team could rely on Palo Duro to run the ball a majority of the time, so far this season it’s difficult to gauge what the Dons will do when they have the ball.

“They do run it a lot,” Rhoades said. “Depending on who you’re looking at, their percentages of run and pass are quite a bit up and down. They had a three-way scrimmage and what they did against River Road wasn’t necessarily what they did against Bushland. And what they did against both of them wasn’t necessarily what they did against Amarillo High.”

Palo Duro will spread the field and look to get their playmakers in the open.

“They base out of a spread offense,” Rhoades said. “What they try to do is get the ball to really good athletes in space. They feel like if they can do that, they’re going to give those athletes a chance to make big plays. Palo Duro’s a big-play offense. It always has been.”

That means the Bulldog defense will have to be on their toes.

“You have to be very, very disciplined on the defensive side of the ball to counteract that, because on any given play they can go the distance,” Rhoades said.

Palo Duro’s offense managed 186 yards against Amarillo. Quarterback Tyreeke Shephard, a 6-foot-3, 175-pound sophomore, led the team in rushing with 53 yards on five carries. He also completed 3-of-11 passes for 24 yards and an interception. Junior quarterback Noah Coronado had five completions in 12 attempts for 62 yards.

As it is every year, the Palo Duro defense is a fast team that closes to the ball very well.

“Defensively, they’re very fast and very aggressive to the ball,” Rhoades said. “That’s a challenge in the fact we’re going to have to match that aggression. They’re also a very athletic team. We’re going to have to hold and sustain our blocks. If we do those things, I think we’ll have a chance to have some successful drives, successful plays, successful possessions. We did those things for about a half against Randall.

“I don’t think our offense was very proud of what they did in the second half. That’s a credit to our young men. I know they’ll come back out this week and re-dedicate themselves and have a much better showing.”

Junior speedster Trendan Jackson rushed for 105 yards and scored both touchdowns for Plainview. He also caught a two-point conversion.

Plainview ground out 162 yards rushing against a strong Randall defense. But the passing game had just one completion for seven yards in seven attempts. Rhoades said a combination of elements in the game caused the lack of air attack.

“We work on our passing game quite a bit. We just need to be more efficient in what we do,” Rhoades said. “It was a team thing. It wasn’t just the quarterback or just the receivers. Sometimes we had some breakdowns in protection. And part of that is because Randall’s really good up front.”

Rhoades said his team will take a more basic approach this week.

“It may be a little simpler this week, but it will be more efficient and effective is what we hope,” Rhoades said. “We need to do our plays effectively and execute them efficiently. We didn’t do that in the passing game last week. We had some busted routes and some things like that. And that’s another reason why we became a little simpler. We’re not going to ask them to do as much, with the hopes that what we do, we do well. As this offense grows, we’ll be able to add more facets in. But we’d better be good at what we do before that.”

Key players Plainview must be aware of on Palo Duro’s defense are safety Jesus Mercado, who had 12 tackles against Amarillo High last week; and inside linebacker Khalil Gipson and outside linebacker James Ervin, who had 10 tackles each in the opening game.

Rhoades said the Bulldogs’ defense played well against Randall, though they were on the field a great deal more than the offense.

“Our offense only ran about 43 plays and we expect to run upwards of 70,” Rhoades said. “And so our defense was on the field more than we would have liked them to be. Those 30 plays went somewhere and, unfortunately, Randall got to run them. There was some yardage given up. But when you don’t control the ball like you know you can, then our defense is on the field more than they need to be. They performed very well every time they were out there. I thought they played very, very hard against an explosive running back and a smart quarterback.”

Rhoades said the opening game was a learning experience for his team, one of the lessons being how to deal with adversity during a game.

“The better we learn how to deal with adversity, the better we’ll be as a team,” Rhoades said. “We learned a lot of lessons last week against a really good Randall team. We assume those lessons will be able to be applied because we have no doubt that at some point in the Palo Duro game there’s going to be some adversity. Very few times do you get to play a game where everything’s clicking on all cylinders in every phase of the game. And so, the team that deals with that adversity the best is the team that’s going to win.”